Professor McAdoo’s research focus is studying the role of landslides in seafloor landscape evolution, continental slope geomorphology, seismic and tsunami hazard assessment, on-land tsunami sedimentation, and post-disaster aid distribution. He has been on a number of research cruises, including to the Cascadia accretionary prism, Costa Rica, and the Mid-Atlantic ridge where he went to ocean floor in the research submarine Alvin a total of six times. He co-authored tsunami survey field reports on the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami in Indonesia and the Maldives by the UNESCO-sponsored International Tsunami Survey Teams and has returned to the region a number of times for follow-up surveys.